Anaheim Angels all the way

2010 Hitter Projections

2009-11-15T11:34:00.000-08:00

Are available on Baseballprojection.com.

The Pitcher projections are still in process, and will be several weeks away. I have the hitter overall projections on the team pages, but do not have the individual hitter pages like last year's. The 2009 Projections are all intact, just look for the archived projections section. I've moved from using excel to generate these to a database. This has it's advantages, but will require a lot more work. I'm not sure if I'll be able to show as much detail as my pages had last year. I'll probably replace the pages piece by piece in the coming months.

First on the list: Get a good list of primary position for all players on my list. For now, all players have "H" for hitter as a placeholder under position. I hope the free agent projections, when combined with knowledge about their defense, can help as a discussion point as the free agent season heats up.

Lack of recent posts

2009-09-30T18:19:00.000-07:00

Mostly, it's frustration with the comments. The spamming jackoffasaurs who post what look to be automated requests to come visit their stupid little scam site. I tried comment verification, I tried requiring registered users. Nothing worked. I don't have the time to clean up posts by deleting these comments. So I might as well just turn all the verification off. I'm allowing anonymous posts, as not doing so seems to put more barriers in the way of my friends than stopping the morons.

For the immediate future, I'll most likely post in other places:

1. Any ideas worth turning into a full length article will most likely be sent to Hardball Times, or Fangraphs.
2. Angels related items will be posted as fanposts on Halos Heaven
3. Random baseball related ideas will go to appropriate threads on Baseballthinkfactory or Insidethebook.

I'll keep this blog around as there's no cost to it, and I do find it interesting to look through the archives. Both to see how right I was on something (like the Rays in the preseason of 2008) or how completely wrong I was.

Fill out your scouting report

2009-08-28T16:01:00.000-07:00

Check out the scouting report by and for the fans. This is a great resource, really every bit as good as having access to the scouting reports teams keep secret.

Link

Kazmir is an Angel?

2009-08-28T15:50:00.000-07:00

In what looks to be mostly a salary dump, the Angels pick up Scott Kazmir, who was one of the better young pitchers in baseball from 2005 to 2008. I knew he was having a down season, but didn't realize he was 5.92 ERA bad. He missed a month due to injury. Since he came back, he's made 11 starts, 65 innings, 61 hits, 21 walks, 56 strikeouts. I think we can work with that. He'll make 20 million over the next two years, and should be worth it unless he's injured. His strikeout rate is 7.4 per 9 innings. That's well down from where he was 2005-2008, but that is still a good rate.

Unlike most pitchers having down years, he can't blame it on unlucky balls going for hits. His BABIP is .310, almost exactly his career rate of .311. I think what we have traded for is a guy who was hurt, maybe has lost a bit of zip on his fastball, but still has lot of ability, and the Angels get him without committing for more than 2 years or giving up premium talent. Another thing: He's made 23 starts in his career against the Red Sox, 9 more than he's had against any other opponent, and comes out of it with a 3.59 ERA. Considering that's who the Angels would have to face in the playoffs if the season ended today, I like having Kaz on our side.

Edit: Now I see some reports that the deal fell through. I have no idea if he's actually going to be an Angel.

Angels Come to Camden

2009-08-17T09:50:00.000-07:00

I went to see the Angels and Orioles play on Saturday night. It was a well pitched game by John Lackey and a solid Angel victory. I met Matt Welch and his dad at the game, along with a friend of mine from college who's also an East Coast Angel fan, and attended the game with his wife. Strangely enough, while my friend did not know Matt going into the game, they just so happened to have tickets in the same section, and I was able to get a seat there just walking up to the box office half an hour before the game. It worked out well, our small section became Anaheim Stadium East for the game.

The Number of the Beast

2009-08-17T09:36:00.000-07:00

Woe to you oh earth and sea
for the devil sends the beast with rath
because he knows the time is short
let him who hath understanding reckon the number of the beast
for it is a human number
its number is six hundred and sixty six

-Iron Maiden

This is not the first time I've quoted Number of the beast on this blog, and probably won't be the last, because I like it. Yesterday the beast that the Angel offense has become waited until the 13th inning to send its rath. When the carnage had subsided, the earth shook, many thousands lie dead, and 9 Angels had scored. They now sit atop the American League's offensive leaders with 666 runs scored.

Updated Angel Projections

2009-08-13T21:03:00.000-07:00

I did this on Halos Heaven.

Link

How to Evaluate Catcher Defense

2009-08-04T18:25:00.000-07:00

At least part of it. I remain agnostic as to how much impact a catcher's game calling has on pitchers. I use retrosheet, though you can make a reasonable approximation with data from Baseball-reference, Fangraphs, or Hardball Times.

Data needed: Innings caught, Stolen bases allowed, caught stealing, passed balls, wild pitches, errors, and pickoffs. I have totals of these data for each catcher by pitcher handedness, one total for lefties and one for righties.

1. Find the league averages per inning caught for each of the data elements above, by pitcher hand.

2. Compare each catcher's totals to the league average prorated to his innings. If a league allows .12 steals per inning with RHP, a catcher has 1000 innings and allows 80 steals with RHP, then he has allowed 40 steals fewer than average. Do this for all data elements.

3. Apply run value. For recent years I use:

SB -0.20 ....CS/Pick 0.47 ....WP/PB/Err -0.275

Sum up the run values for all events and both righties and lefties, and you've got catcher runs. Modify as you wish (Don't believe a catcher can have any impact on preventing wild pitches? Leave that out).

Minor League Defensive Stats

2009-08-03T18:46:00.000-07:00

I've worked with Jeff Sackmann from Minor League Splits to apply the TotalZone defensive calculations to the minor leagues. We've done all the full season leagues through July 31st. Jeff provides the raw data, which he gathers from MLB gameday files, and I run the calculations.

Some highlights are offered at Hardball Times. All the player data can be found on minor league splits. The numbers are not park adjusted, and I have my doubts about the consistency of the scorekeeping, but the results are interesting nonetheless.

No Roy Halladay

2009-08-01T13:24:00.000-07:00

I really like Roy Halladay. I would have loved to see him add to the Angel staff, and I still hope to one day see him win his 300th game in an Angel uniform for real, as he has already done in one of my MLB the Show video games.

But I can't complain about the Angels holding on to prospects. The reason this team is in first place right now is because they have resisted trading prospects in the past. You can't win on the backs of a few 12-15-18 million dollar players alone, unless you are the Yankees. There isn't enough room in a moderately large market payroll in the 100 million range to pay enough of those guys to field a winning ballclub. Especially when you choose poorly in who to pay those contracts to, like Gary Matthews Jr. The Angels certainly have not seen all of their prospects pan out, nobody does, but they get enough solid contributions at a below market value to fill out the winning team.

It's tough to tell which prospects will wind up showing the most value. A few years ago the Angels probably would have surrendered Mike Napoli in a trade before Casey Kotchman or Brandon Wood, but Napoli is the one delivering the most value now. It seems wise to play the numbers game with unsure prospects, believing that some will turn into solid big league regulars but not knowing exactly who.

It will hurt to not have Halladay in the rotation. At the rumored offer of Wood, Saunders, and Aybar, Wood is no loss for 2009 since they won't play him, Halladay is an obvious upgrade on Saunders, and Aybar could be replaced by Izturis. What does that give us? A slightly better chance at winning a best of 5 series. As Mark Teixiera showed, getting a big time upgrade in one player, and having that player come through in the postseason, still is no guarantee for success.

I think the Angels passed on upgrading their chances at first round advancement from say, 48% to 52%, or something like that. But they are in better shape to keep turning out the winning seasons in 2010 and beyond, as Wood, Aybar, and Saunders will combine to make less than Halladay, and probably leave room for a decent free agent as well.

The Value of Bobby Abreu

2009-07-16T20:08:00.000-07:00

According to Fangraphs, he's already earned more than double his 5 million 2009 salary, at 10.5 million. He hasn't hit too many homers, but with a .396 OBP, 19 steals, and 58 RBI, he's been a joy to watch. His value goes beyond the stats though, as Torii Hunter gives him some credit:

Having Bobby Abreu here has been big for me. I'm more disciplined at the plate than I've ever been, and I can thank Bobby for that. He's a master up there, and he's a great guy to play with, because he's so willing to share his knowledge. He's also a really funny guy, helping keep things loose.

With 33 walks so far, Torii has the best walk rate of his career, and getting better pitches through improved patience sure hasn't hurt his power or batting average.

Top 500

2009-07-11T18:46:00.000-07:00

The top 300 lists have been replaced by a top 500 list.

Timelining

2009-07-11T14:28:00.000-07:00

Are the players of today better than players of the past? If so, how much better? These are not easy questions to answer. It is possible to construct a study to estimate it. David Gassko did such for The Hardball Times two years ago, and did a good job, producing very reaonable results. Unfortunately, it is far from conclusive and very sensitive to whatever assumptions you use to set it up.

The approach, which I have played around with, is to compare how players do from one season to the next. But how much of it is age decline, and how much is the change in league strength? You really can't tell, since the same process we're using here is what we use to compute aging factors in the first place.

It is necessary to regress to the mean as well. Take two average players, but one is +15 by luck and the other is -15 by bad luck. The next year, player 1 should be average. But player 2 may not play, or else be limited to a bench role, so as a group you would see decline even if there was no real change at all.

Some criticized David's study for regressing too much, including some Baseball Prospectus Authors, who apparently didn't see the need for regression at all. They are demonstrably wrong about not needing regression*, but may be right in that David did too much. It's pretty much impossible to tell.

I tried to get around the regression issue by choosing only players who were average in year one, or very close to it. Even with that, what age ranges should I include? I tried using ages 26-28 in year one (27-29 year 2). This would work if it were true that on average, 28 year olds were equal to 27 year olds. I also tried looking at ages 25-28 and 26-29, which would look at, on average, ages 26.5 and 27.5. This works if age 27 is indeed the true peak. The difference in results is tiny, but become huge when chained to look at seasons 100 years apart.

Another issue that isn't even touched is improvements that affect all players. We're assuming that the player is constant from year 1 to year 2 and any changes measured represent the league changing around him. What if some new, illegal or legal, nutritional supplement makes every hitter and pitcher better? This study would not pick that up at all. I'm not sure it even matters. If there are great advancements making everyone a better player then we should not penalize great players from the past for not having these advantages. If they played today, they would have them just like everyone else. I think we want to look at the greatness of the player, not what improved circumstances allow him.

One thing that can should be considered is game improvements from using a greater pool of the best available players. Major Leaguers before 1947 would not have dominated their leagues to the same extent if they had not excluded players of darker skin color.

*Honus Wagner is the case in point. The no-regression time lines would make him a replacement level hitter (and Ty Cobb not much better I guess) in today's game. Here are some factors that determine how great a ballplayer is, in order from the ones that seem to have changed the most over the years to the least:

1. Size and Strength
2. Speed
3. Throwing Ability
4. Hand/eye coordination, reactions.

No question that players of today are much bigger and stronger than players 100 years ago. But Wagner was an exception, 5'11, 200 pounds, and was one of the earliest players to work out with weights. He would not be out of place in today's game. I'm not sure how his speed would rate today. His arm would be one of the best among shortstops, as Wagner is known to have made some incredible long distance throws, I believe near 400 feet. I don't think it is possible, even under the most favorable circumstances, to throw a baseball that far without being able to throw at least 90 MPH. I can't think of any reason why #4 would change that much, unlike muscle mass and speed throw better nutrition. Wagner was the best of his day in this regard, and would almost certainly at least be among the best today.

Best Player, pound for pound

2009-07-06T08:13:00.000-07:00

This post got me thinking. Is Ichiro the best player pound for pound?

The answer is no, it's still Albert Pujols. But Ichiro does come in second. I took each player's career wins over replacement, and converted to a rate stat, wins per 12000 plate appearances. In other words, the number of PA a great player would put up in a long career.

Albert is the best player, of course, at 152 WAR per 12000. Ichiro does rank very high among active players, about 16th place at 93 WAR. Divide this by weight and we get the best pound for pound players:


WAR/Wt Player
0.659  Pujols   
0.578  Ichiro   
0.565  A-Rod
0.558  Mauer
0.529  H Ramirez
0.522  Utley
0.502  Sizemore

Updated Wins Above Replacement

2009-07-05T06:17:00.000-07:00

I've made a few changes:

1. Add a column for reaching on errors for batters.

2. Cap the replacement column, which is based on plate appearances, at 4 PA per game. The batter will be evaluated as if he has the lessor of 4 PA per game, or his actual plate appearances. This eliminates the leadoff bonus, where leadoff hitters may have added 1-2 runs per year to their rating just because they bat at the top of the lineup and get more bats. One reason for this is that in evaluating runs over replacement, you have to assume that the replacement player will not bat at the top of the order, but the bottom, with the other hitters moving up.

3. Pitcher's hitting and pitching records are all on the same page.

4. Pitchers have a new set of columns, showing how far above/below average they were in several independent categories. This is meant not as a value measure, but more a descriptor. Not "How great a pitcher was he?", but "What kind of pitcher was he?" This shows that practically all of Randy Johnson's value came from his strikeouts, he was essentially an average pitcher if he didn't whiff you. Roger Clemen's value lies more in a mix of strikeouts and homerun prevention. Tom Glavine, on the other hand, was below average in strikeouts but excelled in keeping the ball in the park and stranding runners.

5. Pitcher's hitting records include a position adjustment, so his WAR Total shows how valuable he was relative to the average pitcher. (For pitcher's hitting, average and replacement level are the exact same thing.)

6. And finally, the numbers go all the way back to 1871 for hitters and 1876 for pitchers. Some of the estimates used to fill these stats in, like the baserunning regression formula or the JAARF fielding numbers, are not to be trusted as anything more than a reasonable guess. Catcher defensive ratings are based on passed balls and errors only. It is not worth it to even try to estimate performance against the running game by catcher assists. Mike Piazza had about as many assists per game as Johnny Bench. Enough said.

7. The 300 lists have not been updated. When I do, it will probably be a 500 list since so many more players are added.

Highest Leverage Index of All Time

2009-07-03T11:03:00.000-07:00

...Or at least 1954, the years retrosheet has play by play files for.

I sorted my career pitcher log by career leverage index, which measures the volatility of a game (1 is average, 9th inning, 1 run lead is high, 7th inning, 12 run lead is low). Since there are some pitchers who came up for a cup of coffee, might have for some emergency found themselves in a crucial sitation, and never pitched again, I was expected to see a lot of 2-5 inning guys before I got to the real careers.

In reality, there are only a few of them. Bruce Sutter ranks 8th with a 2.0 leverage index, behind 7 guys who pitched no more than 3 innings each. A few pitchers come in at 1.9, K-Rod, Percival, John Franco, and Trevor Hoffman among them. Mariano Rivera is at 1.8.

Only one pitcher has a leverage index of 3.0, hitting that on the nose. Surprise is, it wasn't even a real pitcher, but catcher Brent Mayne for one inning on August 22, 2000. The game between the Rockies went 12 innings, and the Rockies had already used 9 pitchers before handing the ball to Mayne. I don't remember the whole story, maybe the last guy got hurt and Mayne had to pitch since there was nobody left. The 6 pitchers before him didn't work very hard, throwing between 3 and 12 pitches each.

Anyway, Mayne faced Tom Glavine and got a ground out. Walt Weiss flew out to center. This pitching stuff ain't that hard, is it? A single, wild pitch, and walk later, Mayne found himself staring down the reigning NL MVP, Larry Wayne Jones, who had already homered in the game. No big deal, Jones grounded out to third, the Rockies won the game in the bottom of the inning, and Mayne's legend as the most leverage pitcher of all time was established.

Updated Hitter Projections

2009-06-30T20:47:00.000-07:00

The player pages haven't changed, but I did add a hitter update in an excel spreadsheet on the right hand side of Baseballprojection.com.

Some things that are not yet in the new program: Runs, RBI, SB, CS, and any estimate of playing time. For every player I just project 350 plate appearances, which is about what they'll get if they play every day from here on out.

The projections include all the pre-2009 minor league data that went into last winter's projections, but no 2009 minor league data. Exceptions are Brandon Wood, Sean Rodriguez, Matt Wieters and Jake Fox, who I entered by hand.

David Wright

2009-06-24T21:26:00.000-07:00

I've been reading this thread on David Wright. It made me wonder what the proper weights are for projecting a player, varied by the component. I looked at strikeout rate, walk rate, homer rate, and BA on balls in play. The hitters I used are guys who had 400+ AB in 4 straight years from 1982 to 2005. I'm using the first 3 years to try and project year 5. The weights are year-1, year-2, year-3, and LG average.

For K, the weights I get are 7/3/2/1, which yields a new .235 K rate for Wright.

BB: 9/5/4/1. Not a whole lot of regression needed when you have 3 full years of these players. Wright comes in at .133 per PA, the only part of his game where he's playing at his normal level.

HR: 11/7/5/2. For David, a .043 rate per contact (AB-K) which means 12 more homers, and a projected season total of only 16.

BABIP: 10/7/6/10. Here's where regression plays a big role, but still gives a rest of season figure of .368. We can do a better job by considering batted ball data and player speed, but that's it for tonight.

I didn't do extrabase hits, but assume 20 2b and 3 3b, put the pieces together, and I get a rest of season line of 303/395/475. That does surprise me a bit, I didn't think his power projection would drop so much. But he's still a great player, even if that's all he does from here on out.

Outfield Ratings for pre-Retrosheet

2009-06-22T18:28:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago I asked people to rate, on a scale of 1-5, the defensive play fro some outfielders who played from 1900 to 1950. Only 3 people answered the call, but I'll take what I can get (thank you to those who helped), and compare them to my system, JAARF (Just Another Adjusted Range Factor).

I'll score my results as either hit if it reasonably matches the subjective rating, foul if it isn't horrible, and whiff if it's too far off. There were a few misses, but overall I'm happy with the results given the crude data I worked with. Even with today's advanced defensive stats, there are still a few whiffs where either the numbers or the impressions of observers are way off. Take Torii Hunter. His UZR is a bit below average though he regularly amazes Angel fans, including this blogger. I'm not going to go on an anti-UZR (or anti-TotalZone) diatribe, but I'm still quite content to have Torii in CF every day.

Anyway, the ratings. First is a number, 1 to 5, average reader response. 5 is better, 3 is average. Second is career JAARF runs at the position.

The hits:
Averill, cf, 2.3, -59
Carey, cf, 4, +103
Cobb, cf, 3.3, -15
Dom Dimaggio, cf, 5, 74
Goslin, lf, 3.7, 66
Heilmann, rf, 2, -70
Hooper, rf, 5, 150
Joe DiMaggio, cf, 5, 81
C Klein, rf, 2, -57
L Waner, cf, 4, 33
D Lewis, lf, 4.5, 48
Speaker, cf, 5, 182
P Waner, rf, 4, 55
Cy Williams, cf, 2.5, -16
T Williams, lf, 2, +3

I counted Williams as a hit since this stat only shows him through 1954, after that TotalZone takes over and rates him below average for his remaining years. It looks like a normal career progression, and Ted was an OK fielder when he was younger, and 20 years too early for the DH role after that. I'm proud of having Speaker with the big rating.

The fouls: Not good ratings, but not clearly wrong:

Crawford, rf, 3.7, -48
Bob Johnson, lf, 2.7, 46
Kiner, lf, 1, -16
Manush lf, 2, 28
S Rice, rf, 3.7, 91
Simmons, lf, 3, 105
Slaughter, lf, 3, 40
Z Wheat, lf, 3.3, 109
Cramer, cf, 2.7, -70

Perhaps these can be explained partially by position, most of these are corner outfielders who rate about average but have good numbers - They weren't especially good, thus they were stuck in corners, but might have been better than some oafs out there. Cramer is the opposite in center, he was a bit below average, but compared to much better outfielders his run rating is very low.

The ones who don't fit the pattern are Crawford, who probably should rate better, and Kiner, who should rate worse.

The whiffs:

Medwick, lf, 2.5, +97
Nicholson, rf, 1, +26
Mel Ott, rf, 2.5, +87
Roush, cf, 4, -8
Ruth, rf, 2.3, +103
Veach, lf, 2.7, 72

Mostly bad fielders who rate well by some flaw. I don't think Ott was a bad fielder, but I tried to keep my own opinion out of it. Roush was considered a great defensive centerfielder, perhaps the best in the NL of his day. Ruth? I've got some thoughts on this but with his high defensive ratings (justified or not) he and Bonds have very similar profiles on the WAR charts. Except for pitching, of course.

So overall, the ratings are probably right 50% of the time, wrong 20% of the time, and inconclusive 30%. I'm only doing themjavascript:void(0) because it has become an obsession, to rate every damn player who ever played the game.

Praise for a few announcers

2009-06-20T13:47:00.000-07:00

The normal thing for bloggers to do is wait for announcers to say something stupid, then write a post explaining exactly how they are stupid. Whole websites have been built around this concept. Sometimes, though, credit is due.

Today's game of the week features Tampa Bay and the Mets. David Wright is currently hitting .350 but is on pace for 170 strikeouts and only 10 homers. It is certainly a weird season. Ken Rosenthal brought these numbers and mentioned Wright's .480 BABIP. Even Tim McCarver seemed to grasp regression to the mean, as he (rightly) doesn't think Wright will continue striking out at a 170K pace. It was a discussion you'd be more likely to read at a site like the Hardball Times.

Wright is having an odd mixture of good and bad luck. There's some bad luck in that he's not making contact with balls he normally hits. Some bad luck in that balls he normally hits out of the park are staying in. And quite a bit of good luck in that balls he does contact are dropping in for hits. The thing about Wright is that he's not the best at any aspect of the game, but is well above average at just about everything. It's weird to see him with an extreme BABIP, and an extreme whiff rate.

I would think Wright will almost certainly hit more like his .300, 30 hr, 115K self from here on than the statistical freak he's been so far. He's having as good a season as he normally does, but it is difficult to see how one could consciously trade off one's abilities to get to where he is now.

Want a higher BA at the expense of homers? This can probably be done by shortening your swing, going with the pitch, etc., but that approach should decrease your strikeout rate, not increase it.

If you consciously swing harder, and do so at the expense of strikeouts, I can see where such an approach could increase your BABIP and your K rate at the same time. But that would approach should not kill your power, should it?

I'll add a little batted ball data from Fangraphs. Wright is hitting slightly more line drives (25% to 23% career) at the expense of ground balls. Not a big enough increase to explain the huge BABIP increase. He's hit 3 more line drives than his career averages would expect, yet has 20 more hits in play. His flyball percentage is unchanged, so it's hard to see why he's stopped hitting homers.

Just a weird season for Wright, but I expect him to display his normal profile of skills going forward.

Fact Check for Rob Dibble

2009-06-16T17:34:00.000-07:00

I generally try to ignore most of the blabbering from the announcer's booth during games. But sometimes they just get on their points and just keep hammering at it, getting on my nerves. So I have to put my 2 cents in through the small forum I have into the baseball world, this blog.

Today it's Rob Dibble, talking about the greatness of Derek Jeter's defense. He's telling us that Jeter didn't win a gold glove until 2004 because Omar Vizquel was in the league.

Fact: Omar Vizquel won AL gold gloves every year from 1993 to 2001.

Fact: When Omar's streak was broken, the new gold glove shortstop was a guy who currently plays on the left side of the infield for the Yankees.

Fact: It was not Derek Jeter.

A-Rod broke the Vizquel streak, and had Vizquel declined/gotten hurt/been traded to the National league earlier, it is likely that A-Rod would have had a gold glove earlier, not Jeter. Jeter did break A-Rod's streak, of course, with some help from his manager and team, who decided to take A-Rod out of the competition.

Raw Power

2009-06-13T18:51:00.000-07:00

I was checking out some of the new data released by MLB, hit f/x, which tracks the ball after it makes contact with the bat. I'm not going to be able to attend their conference in San Francisco, and I don't know how to do all the perl coding that downloads the games and parses the xml into databases, but on this thread at Inside the Book, Harry Pavlidis was kind enough to post the data in CSV format.

Anyway, I was looking at average speed off bat as an estimate of raw power, but that isn't clean enough. If a player has a low average speed off bat, it could be because he is swinging weakly, but it could also be that he is not making solid contact, making too many popups or weak grounders and not enough solid line drives.

It appears that the optimal angle of the ball off the bat for real solid contact is about 11 degrees, this represents a slight uppercut that will get you some extra bases. So for raw power, I looked at average speed off bat when the angle is between 6 and 16 degrees. This will tell us how hard a player hits it when he connects. The sample size is very small, it looks like the dataset only covers a portion of the 2009 season, so I'm looking at players with at least 8 of these "solid contacts"

The ones who hit the ball the hardest:

102.5 Scott Hairston
102.2 Albert Pujols
101.2 Miguel Cabrera
98.8 Mike Cameron
98.1 Robinson Cano
96.9 Jason Bay
96.8 Adam Dunn
96.6 Vernon Wells
96.3 Justin Morneau

Cano and Hairston are surprises, the others are legit long distance hitters.

Average seems to be around 90 MPH.

The lowest:
78.5 Geoff Blum
79.3 Ichiro! (So much for his supposed raw power)
80.9 David Eckstein
81.5 Jason Giambi (is his bat speed lost to age?)
82.0 Joe Thurston
82.4 Mike Aviles
82.8 Kelly Johnson
83.0 Magglio Ordonez
83.5 Nate McLouth
84.4 Dexter Fowler
84.9 Nyjer Morgan

David Ortiz is below average at 87.4, but he ranks right between Carlos Pena and Evan Longoria. This is not what I would expect since those two are hitting for tons of power. It makes me wonder how consistent the data are, and if there are some quirks in ballpark setups.

Torii Hunter didn't make the list as only 5 of his hits are included in the dataset and meet the angle off bat criteria. His average is 87.8, which seems strange to me as Torii has hit a bunch of homers this year (including one as I type). From watching just about all of his games, when Torii hits one, he crushes it.

The Angel Lineup, small samples be damned:
C Napoli 95.4 (one hit)
1B Kendry Morales 96.6 (4)
2B Howie Kendrick 89.5 (3)
SS Erick Aybar 89.1 (8)
3B Chone Figgins 91.5 (6)
RF Bob Abreu 89.7 (9)
CF Hunter 87.8 (5)
LF Juan Rivera 102.5 (6)
DH Vlad Guerrero (no hits qualify)

Without any minimum amount of hits, Lance Berkman takes the top spot (109.3, 4 hits). Manny Ramirez (103.6, 7) is up there too.

At the other end, Kevin Millar (71.6, 6 hits) and Alexei Ramirez (73.4, 6) are not making things happen. A few pitchers make the list with numbers in the 20's, these have to be bunts, I don't think it's possible to take a full swing, make solid contact, and get that result.

2009 Draft

2009-06-09T17:55:00.000-07:00

Picking back to back with the 24th and 25th picks, the Angels take a pair of high school outfielders. At #24 it's Randal Grichuk from Texas, and at #25 Michael Trout from New Jersey. I don't know anything about either, but I like the names and the idea. The Angels haven't taken an outfielder in the first round since Darin Erstad in 1995. The result is that they've had to spend the big free agent bucks on outfielders. Sometimes it works (Guerrero, Hunter, Abreu) and sometimes it doesn't (Finley, Matthews). I like the idea of taking position players here, as most teams went after pitching, and pitchers can be such a crapshoot anyway. With 7 more picks in the first 5 rounds, the Angels will have their chances to add some arms anyway.

As for the names, they both bring back memories of Angel greats from the past. Grichuk will probably have to answer to "Bobby" at some point, and Trout will be known as the "little fish".

1970 World Series was Tainted

2009-06-08T18:17:00.000-07:00

I was watching an Orioles classic game, game3 of the 1970 world series against Cincinnati, when the announcer said this, very matter of factly, about Red's pitcher Tony Cloninger:

Striken with a mysterious eye ailment in 1967. A reaction from steroids, and uh, he was nearly blind in one eye. His vision's all right now.

He threw ball four to the hitter and the announcers found other things to talk about. Not a hint of anything possibly wrong.

He was probably roided up for this game. I'm sure they were talking about corticosteroids. But you never know.

Randy Johnson 300 Wins

2009-06-04T20:17:00.000-07:00

I wanted to see this game, going down to Nationals stadium last night only to have the whole thing rained out. I didn't try again today but at least got home in time to watch most of the game. Johnson pitched great for 6 innings, making a great defensive play nad watching Brian Wilson get a very close call in the 8th with the bases loaded, a 3-2 count, and a one run lead.

I believe some active pitcher is going to win 300, but damned if I know who, and it's likely at least a decade away unless Jamie Moyer can keep making 30 starts a year to age 51.

There are now 4 pitchers to win 300 while pitching in the era of the 5 man rotation, Maddux, Clemens, Glavine, and Johnson. A few pitchers are ahead of Johnson's pace, but he got a late start (first win at age 25) and nobody can be expected to match his late peak.

Looking at the average wins by age of those 4 pitchers I get:

Age Wins
28 106
29 124
30 137
31 152
32 165
33 181
34 201
35 219

CC Sabathia, 28, is ahead of Glavine, behind Maddux and Clemens, and ahead of the average.

At age 30, Buerhle is 9 behing the average, and Santana is 21 back.

Roy Oswalt, 31, is 21 back, and Roy Halladay is 25 back of the 32 year old average.

Tim Hudson, 33, is 35 back of the average, and hasn't pitched yet this season.

Take any one individually, and the odds are stacked against him, but I think one of these guys will come through.